The widespread use and development of hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, fuel-cell vehicles, etc. have been active in recent years. For vehicle air conditioners mounted in such vehicles, an integrated-inverter electric compressor accommodating an electric motor is employed instead of an open-type compressor that is driven by motive power from an engine. The integrated-inverter electric compressor is configured such that an inverter accommodating section is provided on the periphery of a housing that accommodates an electric motor and a compression mechanism, and an inverter that converts DC power supplied from a high-voltage power supply to three-phase AC power and feeds the three-phase AC power to the electric motor through glass-sealed terminals is installed in the inverter accommodating section (for example, refer to Patent Literature 1).
As shown in Patent Literature 1, the inverter accommodating section is generally configured such that after the inverter is installed, an opening is tightly sealed with a cover. In this case, to ensure its sealing performance, the sealing is performed such that a sealant called a liquid gasket is applied on the joint surface between the inverter accommodating section and the cover. Meanwhile, as a technique for sealing by joining the joint surfaces such as flanges with a sealant, a sealing technique involving filling a groove provided in the joint surface with a sealant called a liquid gasket and curing it to form a thick film of the sealant in the gap between the joint surfaces has been proposed (for example, refer to Patent Literature 2).